Hollywood

This is probably going to make me sound like a huge fogey, but the hell with it: this movie would have better if it had been made 20 years ago. It still wouldn’t be as good as Last Crusade, much less the original Raiders (kind of a tall order, since that was the movie that made me fall in love with movies as a kid), but it would have been better. A bit better, anyway.

Why? Because it would have pre-dated the CGI technology in which Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull overindulges. CGI, in and of itself, is no different than any other tool at the disposal of a filmmaker: it can be used skillfully, to thrilling cinematic effect (as in The Matrix, or the Lord of the Rings trilogy), but it can also be overemphasized, to the detriment of essentials like plot and character development (the lamentable Star Wars prequel trilogy). Crystal Skull is nowhere near as bad as the latter, but it falls well short of the former.

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As a new incentive for my readers to post comments, I have incorporated a gravatars plugin into my commenting interface. The comments from this old post of mine gives an idea of what it looks like.

A gravatar is an avatar - that is, a small picture you use to represent yourself - that appears next to your posts or comments on any site that uses the gravatar service. On the official site they say the term gravatar stands for “globally recognized avatar.” I suppose that makes sense, but I prefer to think of a gravatar as an avatar imbued with a particular aura of prestige and authority.

Now all I need to do is hope you guys sign up and make your own gravatars (it’s free). I personally get a kick out of how they have you assign an MPAA - style rating to your finished gravatar, i.e., G, PG, R, or X. Currently I have this blog configured to show gravatars rated G, PG, or R. So there it is, people - don’t bring your X-rated gravatars here, ’cause C&B ain’t havin’ it. There are plenty of places on the web to post dirty pictures without me providing another one, anyway.

What would a gravatar have to consist of to justify a PG rating as opposed to a G? If we’re really using the MPAA as a guide, then I guess Humphrey Bogart with a lit cigarette between his lips would get you a PG. As for an R, I for one can’t conceive of representing myself with an image that would require a web user under the age of 17 to be accompanied by a parent or guardian. But whatever floats your boat, I guess. An R gravatar would have to show… I don’t know, maybe the word “fuck?” According to the ridiculously arbitrary MPAA quasi-guidelines, I guess someone’s head getting blown off would be OK, but an animated GIF of two people having sex showing three or more thrusts would be an automatic X.

So enjoy your non-X-rated gravatars, good people. Mine is rated G; maybe it’ll make me as popular as Finding Nemo. I’m aware that many knowledgeable bloggers would say that if I want more comments I should forget about gravatars and, you know, post more frequently. Point taken, but with all due respect that’s “inside-the-box” thinking. What good is killer content without bells and whistles? …OK, on second thought, don’t answer that.

No, no, do. Do answer it. I like comments.

I was just listening to an episode of the reliably interesting radio show This American Life called “Quiz Show.” The second of the episode’s three segments was about the MIT Mystery Hunt, an annual event where teams of intimidatingly brainy puzzle geeks race each other to the solution of a puzzle concocted by the previous year’s winning team. The following passage about what the reporter calls “‘A-ha!’ moments” traveled the boomerang path of irony to cause me an “A-ha!” moment of my own:

Are absolute Answers a human construct, while the underlying Truth in nature is not knowable in such terms? I was immediately reminded of the works of filmmaker David Lynch, in particular his briefly brilliant TV series Twin Peaks, which aired in the early 1990’s.

A typically atypical Twin Peaks scene.

As many will recall, the plot of the show concerned the question of who killed Laura Palmer, the high school homecoming queen in an obscure northwestern logging town. The ABC network promoted Peaks by following the “Who Shot J.R.?” paradigm, and did so quite effectively - at the outset. Lynch was in no great hurry to resolve the Laura Palmer case, sticking instead to his own general style: the seemingly straightforward narrative meandered through a landscape of imagery as strange and disturbing as it was visually striking. Perhaps inevitably, the series soon proved to be as daunting a challenge for network publicists as it was for viewers (apart from a small number of die-hard fans, of which I was one).

One could look at Twin Peaks as a continuous series of “whys,” and indeed, many have. Why the dancing midget, and why was his dialogue recorded backward and played back forward? Why didn’t Agent Cooper’s susceptibility to bizarre visions of midgets and giants disqualify him from becoming an FBI agent? Why does the log lady carry a log around, and is it always the same log or does she have, like, a collection of them? As much fun as these “whys” are, they are incidental to the overall purpose: the series as a whole represents one big Why.

The following paragraph contains a SPOILER. If you are planning to watch the Twin Peaks DVD set and don’t want to know who killed Laura Palmer, consider yourself alerted.

When the murder’s resolution confirms the presence of supernatural elements, the Sheriff comments, “I’ve lived in these old woods most of my life. I’ve seen some strange things, but this is way off the map. I’m having a hard time believing,” the mystical Agent Cooper responds, “Is it easier to believe a man could rape and murder his own daughter?” Satisfying though these lines were, they were also uncommonly pedantic for David Lynch. They were not at all uncommonly pedantic for prime time network television; in fact, I’d lay odds that pressure from ABC forced Lynch to plainly spell out something that his best work would only imply. Finding out WHO killed Laura Palmer is incidental to the essential mystery of why she was killed.

When puzzles like the ones in the MIT Mystery Hunt are solved, that’s it. Done. It’s solved. Completion feels good, which is why there are puzzle junkies, why the spongy psychological term closure has become popular, and why TV networks don’t like unresolved murders. I’m no different in this sense: I like having all the loose ends tied up as much as the next guy. Ultimately, puzzles and TV shows provide frameworks for delivering little completion fixes. We seek them out because out in the day-to-day world they just don’t happen too often. You will almost surely never know why you didn’t get into grad school ten years ago, or why the thieves picked your car. But when you solve the Sunday crossword, it helps. It reminds you that answers exist, and you do sometimes get them. However, when a TV show cops out and spoon-feeds you an answer it helps less, because the answers most often seem unsatisfying. Good dramatists of any medium know that questions are more compelling than answers, and that the only worthy answers are ones that lead straight to more questions.

I guess it stands to reason that L.A. would have an actual store where customers can purchase an ego boost. Where else does ego so grease the gears of the local economy?

Like so many other commodities, ego now comes in a variety of forms. Stroking, toadying, and empty flattery are popular. Less often mentioned but no less prevalent are such services as sucking up, brown-nosing, being buttered up and having sunshine blown up your ass. The sensitive nature of these deliveries naturally requires an establishment like the one pictured to be staffed by licensed egotologists, serving the demands of everyday egotists.

I was even thinking of getting into the ego business myself, and planned to name my own retail operation Leggo My Ego (trademark implications notwithstanding). But then I began noticing things like this:

Chalk it up to supply and demand. Come to think of it, most people I run into do seem to have ego to spare. Perhaps it’s due to Pilot Season, Awards Season, or the annual pilgrimage to Sundance… who knows. On the other hand, I’d think that the new season of American Idol would have upset the egosystem the same way it did in the past. Ergo, ego is a field I might do best to avoid.

It was revealed this morning that on the upcoming season of the CBS reality-TV warhorse Survivor, the contestants are divided into teams by race. Kind of adds a new layer of meaning to “The tribe has spoken,” doesn’t it?

Part of me feels like I should find this objectionable, but I just can’t get there. Really, my main thought is to give Mark Burnett credit for continuing to find new ways to promote that show. The first American season of Survivor aired in (a moment while I google…) 2000, which in terms of so-called “reality TV” history seems like an epoch ago. At least, it does to me. Yet here we are, and that show is still making headlines.

I watched the first three seasons of Survivor, lost interest, and then turned it on again for the All-Stars edition. Will the provocative premise of “Survivor: Ethnic Strife” be enough to make me tune in again? Hmm…. nah. Put it this way: it would take quite a buzz to make me curious enough to check it out (by “buzz” I mean word-of-mouth, not a half-pitcher-of-margaritas buzz - although that might do it, too). I’d probably watch if, for instance, they had a reward challenge where if the Latino team wins, they get to have Pat Buchanan and Hugh Downs serve them barbecue. A full barbecue, including dessert, AND do all the cleanup. In French maid outfits. If one of the other teams wins they get the same thing, plus they get to invite the Latino team.

I don’t see it happening, but even the thought of it is schadenfreude-licious.